Alternative Assessment

Alternative assessment uses activities that reveal what students can do with language, emphasizing their strengths instead of their weaknesses. Alternative assessment´s instruments are not only designed and structured differently from traditional tests, but are also graded or scored differently. Because alternative assessment is performance based, it helps instructors emphasize that the point of language learning is communication for meaningful purposes.

Alternative assessment methods work well in learner-centered classrooms because they are based on the idea that students can evaluate their own learning and learn from the evaluation process. These methods give learners opportunities to reflect on both their linguistic development and their learning processes (what helps them learn and what might help them learn better). Alternative assessment thus gives instructors a way to connect assessment with review of learning strategies.

Features of alternative assessment:

• Assessment is based on authentic tasks that demonstrate learners' ability to accomplish communication goals
• Instructor and learners focus on communication, not on right and wrong answers
• Learners help to set the criteria for successful completion of communication tasks
• Learners have opportunities to assess themselves and their peers.

Designing tasks for alternative assessment

Successful use of alternative assessment depends on using performance tasks that let students demonstrate what they can actually do with language. Fortunately, many of the activities that take place in communicative classrooms lend themselves to this type of assessment. These activities replicate the kinds of challenges, and allow for the kinds of solutions, that learners would encounter in communication outside the classroom.

The following criteria define authentic assessment activities:

• They are built around topics or issues of interest to the students
• They replicate real-world communication contexts and situations
• They involve multi-stage tasks and real problems that require creative use of language rather than simple repetition
• They require learners to produce a quality product or performance
• Their evaluation criteria and standards are known to the student
• They involve interaction between assessor (instructor, peers, self) and person assessed
• They allow for self-evaluation and self-correction as they proceed

Introducing alternative assessment

With alternative assessment, students are expected to participate actively in evaluating themselves and one another. Learners who are used to traditional teacher-centered classrooms have not been expected to take responsibility for assessment before and may need time to adjust to this new role. They also may be skeptical that peers can provide them with feedback that will enhance their learning.

Instructors need to prepare students for the use of alternative assessments and allow time to teach them how to use them, so that alternative assessment will make an effective contribution to the learning process.

• Introduce alternative assessment gradually while continuing to use more traditional forms of assessment. Begin by using checklists and rubrics yourself; move to self and peer evaluation later.
• Create a supportive classroom environment in which students feel comfortable with one another.
• Explain the rationale for alternative assessment.
• Engage students in a discussion of assessment. Elicit their thoughts on the values and limitations of traditional forms of assessment and help them see ways that alternative assessment can enhance evaluation of what learners can do with language.
• Give students guidance on how to reflect on and evaluate their own performance and that of others (see specifics in sections on peer and self evaluation).

As students find they benefit from evaluating themselves and their peers, the instructor can expand the amount of alternative assessment used in the classroom.